“PROTOTYPING FOR TINY FINGERS”

Building prototypes on paper and testing them with real users, is called low fidelity prototyping or “lo-ti” for short. Paper prototyping is potentially a breakthrough idea for organizations that had never tried it, since it allows you to demonstrate the behavior of an interface very early in development, and test designs with real users if quality is partially a function of the number of iterations and refinements a design undergoes before it hits the street, lo-fi prototyping is a technique that can dramatically increase quality.

¶ The problems with HI FI
*Hi-fi prototypes take too long to build an change; you can’t evaluate an interaction design until after it is built, but after building, changes to the design are difficult.
*Reviewers and testers tend to coniment on “fil and finish” issues; with a slick software prototype, you are just as likely to hear criticism about your choice of fonts, color combination and button sizes.
*Developers resist changes; they are attached to they work because it was so hard to implement.
*A prototype in software can set expectations that will be hard to change.
*A single bug in a hi-fi prototype can bring a test to a complete hall; to test effectively, your prototype need to be complete and robust enough for someone to try to do something useful with it.

¶ A tojan meme
It did more than reproduce itself through the department. It serves as a vehicle for spreading a general appreciation of the value of usability design: developers saw first-hand the difference in people reactions to successive refinements in their designs.
The interface design community as “Formative evaluation” meaning that you are evaluating your design while it is still in its formative stages. Testing is used as a kind of natural selection for ideas, helping your design evolve toward a form that will survive in the wilds of the user community.
With summary evaluation you find out how well you did, but you find out too late to make substantial changes.
The prototyping effort needs to be carefully planned and follow by adequate testing and evaluation.

¶ Building a Lo-Fi prototype.
1. Assemble a hit: it may be hard to get all the materials you need by rummaging through the supply closet in the copy room. Lo-fi designers sometimes find inspiration in the materials at hand.
2. Set a deadline: no matter how hard you think about it you aren’t going to start getting it right until you put something in front of actual users and start refining your idea based on their experience with your design.
3. Construct models. Not illustrations: make what you need to simulate menus dropping down, dialogs popping put, selection highlights and so forth.

¶ Preparing for a test.
Select your users
Prepare test scenarios: write a set of scenarios, preferably drawn from task analysis describing the product during use in a typical work situation.
Practice

¶ Conducting a test
*Greeter: welcomes users and tries to put them at case.
*Facilitator: takes the lead, and is the only team member who is allowed to speak freely during the test. Giving the users instructions, encouraging the user to express his or her thoughts during the test, and making sure everything gets done on time.
*Computer: if the user touches control, the computer arranges, taking care not to explain anything other than the behavior of the interface.
*Observers: The interface is on trial, not you, if you fail to understand something or can’t complete one of the tasks, that’s a sign of trouble with the design, not a lack of intelligence on your part.

¶ Evaluation results
Lo-fi or hi-ti, prototyping is worthless unless information is gathered and the product is refined based on your findings.